Active-TV Technology for iPhone and iPod touch

Navigate YouTube

Navigate YouTube available at iTunes App Sore

An easy to use iPhone and iPod touch App that enables both new and advanced YouTube users to get the best from YouTube.

Browse video Standard Feeds, Categories, Channels and Playlists. Then organize new videos into your own favorites and playlists. Make playlists private or public. Subscribe to other user's playlists and video collections for future viewing. Subscribe to videos matching search-words.

Search for new videos tagged for your language or geographical region, using local keyboard. Explore for new videos via easy switching of user ID to the owner of interesting videos - then explore their world.

All actions are kept in sync with PC, Mac or Apple-TV access to YouTube. Available at Apple App Store.

active-TV technology for PC

Windows PC based home network

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Yahoo Sports

Active-TV Ecosystem Developers,

Recently, Yahoo and Intel issued press releases regarding the Yahoo Sports TV-web channel. There is an extract below. Intel states it is “currently only available for PCs equipped with Intel Viiv technology”. Intel ViiV uses the Media Center Edition (MCE) version of Windows. However, using active-TV software, I had no problem accessing Yahoo Sport from an AMD-based Windows XP PC, or an active-TV Hybrid-STB.

Yahoo Sports’ first TV-web page includes the image “Enjoy with Intel ViiV”, see the screen shot below (lower right).

Yahoo Sports brings US Football statistics to the TV screen. Intel still requires a PC-in-living-room approach; As the ViiV thin-clients have still not appeared. I did not try accessing Yahoo Sports from an Extended Xbox360 – this should work.

Yahoo Sports does not use the overlay TV-web approach supported by active-TV. However a TV image can be scaled to fit within a region of the TV-web channel (known as a Spotlight in Microsoft-speak). Clearly, active-TV also supports this approach. The Intel ViiV method requires a PCI TV-tuner card be used by the PC. The TV channel is typically received in analogy NTSC format and encoded to WMV video. The TV screen shot below shows the TV area as a black rectangle as I was unable to capture the TV image.

Testing indicates the user must first tune to the correct TV channel before staring the Yahoo Sports TV-web channel. If some kind of Microsoft or ViiV Extender was used, the digitised TV video would be sent to the thin-client for presentation on the networked TV.

The active-TV approach in support of Yahoo Sports is different. There would be no use of a PCI TV tuner card. TV video would not be digitised by the PC and sent over the home network. A networked hybrid-STB would receive the broadcast TV in high-def ATSC format (DVB would be used in Europe). The Extended-Notebook (or PC) would process the TV-web material and send it over the network for merging by STB; to produce the TV image.

The active-TV approach requires a lot less network traffic. It also better supports High-Def TV viewing – there is no need to encode analog video, which always results in a reduction in image quality.

Using TV-web brings the TV channel and the statistical information to a single screen. An alternative is to use PC-web with a notebook located in the same room as the TV. But this does not bring the different “materials” to the same screen. Of course, the Notebook computer could also be used to project TV-web to the hybrid-STB while simultaneously supporting the PC-web site.

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Navigate YouTube

Free Windows download

Want to see how it Active-TV Technology for the PC looks on a TV, then downloadthe PC emulation of TV operation. D-Link's site also includes active-TV technlogy support for the DSM-520. (Windows XP or MCE). Navigation is via the left-right arrows and F12 is used for 'back'. The bundle uses an easily changed example menu system.

Active-TV technology enables the Set-Top Box (STB) or TV to display TV-web with the same universal access and opportunity available to PC with PC-web.

Active-TV technlogy uses the same PC browser to process PC-web and TV-web pages, but a browser plug-in sends the TV-web image to a networked thin-client for display on TV.

A networked home PC or laptop computer which assits with formating the TV-web image, is known as an Extended-PC.

Video can be streamed directly to the STB or TV; or it can pass througth the ExtendedPC, where it may be reformated. The video encoding format (CODEC) may be changed (transcoded) by the Extended-PC to accomidate STB or TV capabilities.

Build a TV-web channel

A networked PC and TV supporting Active-TV Technology enables viewing of TV-websites. Download a free TV-web channel below. They can be reused when constructing a new channel. Documentation is also available. Make sure all files (such as C:\Program Files\Common Files\TV-Websites) have permission for all Users to access.